


come in misery

by spaghettirobot



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst, Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Character Death, Character Study, Depression, Drug Use, F/F, Gen, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22599190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaghettirobot/pseuds/spaghettirobot
Summary: When Beau stepped away from it all, the spotlight and the adulation, the love and respect of her friends - her bandmates - she thought she was doing something noble. End things before things had a chance to end her.aka band au but make it sad
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Mollymauk Tealeaf, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Comments: 3
Kudos: 58





	come in misery

Beau’s at some shitty bar when she gets the call. It’s funny, it’s not like you think about where you’ll be when you find out one of your best friends is dead. Maybe because most of us would rather not think about that at all. Point being, she’s not sure if Molly would have been proud or mildly disgusted that he left this world and she found out leaning against a bar with a sticky substance she refuses to interrogate.

It happened. Beau can’t make it unhappen. That’s sort of how it goes.

***

There’s nobody to talk to, that’s sort of the whole point of self imposed exile. When Beau stepped away from it all, the spotlight and the adulation, the love and respect of her friends - her bandmates - she thought she was doing something noble. End things before things had a chance to end her.

Maybe if she lives long enough she’ll start to believe her own bullshit.

Beau shakes her head as she plays with the AirPod in her right ear. She hates these fucking things, the sound quality is bullshit and god forbid even the slightest amount of moisture enters their oh-so-precious environment. The droning sound of the airport leaks through her music anyway. She hears the last call for passengers on their way to places like Billings, Montana and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

She wonders what it would be like to say fuck it, hop on one of those planes and skip out on Los Angeles entirely. Running away from shit is sort of what she does, like, really fucking well.

Final boarding call comes and goes for both of those places. Fleeting thoughts of land and freedom bleed into the overwhelming urge to take a drink. Beau shakes it off. Moments after the call she made a promise to try harder to not be fucked up. Her very presence requires her to actually be present.

Beau hears the desk agent start to call up the first groups to board. She looks down at her ticket and feels a sudden warmth spread through her chest. It radiates outward in a spiral until it reaches her forehead. One swipe of her hand against her forehead reveals beads of sweat starting to form.

She feels clammy. Have airports always been this cramped? And now that she’s noticing things her shirt seems tighter on her neck than when she put it on as she hastily packed her shit. Plus, the guy across from her keeps giving her these strange inquisitive looks and glancing between his phone and her with an increasingly discerning eye.

Her boarding group gets called so she snatches up her shit before he gets a chance to build up the courage to officially recognize her. Out of all the things she needs right now, having to acknowledge who she is might actually be her breaking point. It’s kind of the whole point of moving to the desert where nobody gives a shit about anything except how hot it is. They certainly don’t care about a bass player who abandoned ship at the zenith of her career for generally unknown reasons.

Actually, Beau flags down the flight attendant as soon as she takes a seat. She turns to Beau with a genuine smile on her face and Beau considers it for a second. Maybe in another life.

The woman leans into her space and Beau’s hit with a visceral scent trigger that almost knocks her off her seated ass. Beau blinks and shakes that off as well.

“Can I get you started on a beverage?” The smile is still polite but growing less so as Beau takes a moment to get her feet back under her.

“Sorry, yeah, uh,” Beau rubs her eyes, a wary smile crossing her face. “Whiskey. I need a drink.”

The flight attendants smile remains but Beau can still see her own self-hatred reflected back at her. It’s no big thing to get, it’s not the flight attendants fault that Beau can’t keep a promise to anybody let alone herself.

And certainly not Molly.

She drains the first tiny plastic bottle before they even close the cabin door.

***

There’s a story of a couple of kids from various fucked up backgrounds who met one day and were never the same. It’s a story about friendship and found family and music and love and lies and heartbreak and substance and substances.

Mostly that last part for her and Molly. It was kind of their thing.

Beau met Molly at the seediest bar on Hollywood Boulevard that whether out of neglect or indifference remained unchanged since the 80s. Beau was there with a woman, because isn’t there always a woman, and Molly was just there in the way that only he could be. You could put ten or a thousand or a million people in a room and Molly would always rise as the cream above the crop.

It’s a funny story actually or maybe it isn’t and Beau is drunk and nostalgic and grieving at 30,000 feet. Probably half of one and a dozen of the other.

She chugs another little plastic bottle of whiskey and shakes this new empty at the flight attendant. Is there such a thing as overserving on an airplane? Probably. Has this flight attendant figured that maybe, just maybe, Beau is more likely to destroy herself than anything else? More than likely.

Another bottle arrives on her plastic table and Beau goes back to that night.

Ophelia, aka the woman at the time, was so far out of Beau’s league that she would do anything and everything for her. On this particular night it was coke but it wasn’t always drugs, sometimes it was favors or errands. Whatever it took to punch above her weight class, Beau was right there. Because self esteem or whatever.

All this to say, Beau’s three lines deep in the shady back room of the bar that Motley Crue forgot when in walks this magnificent experience of a person. To describe Molly in this moment is, actually, impossible. The thing about cocaine is that it doesn’t make you the most reliable narrator.

The purple peacock coat. She’d asked to wear it and he asked to give her a tarot reading in exchange for the privilege. Beau didn’t believe in all that shit so she happily agreed. It’s not real anyway and in her substance addled mind she was going to look so cool in that coat.

Molly pulled three cards and set them down in front of Beau and proceeded to weave the most beautiful web of artisan bullshit that she forgot about the coat entirely. She forgot about Ophelia entirely.

She and Molly were rarely apart after that.

Until they were.

***

By the time she lands in LA, Beau’s three sheets to the wind but she wishes it would do her the incredible mercy of blowing her away. Away from this place and the expectations and responsibility. She swore when she left she would never come back, it was for the best.

Molly is dead.

***

Beau first picked up a bass when she was 12, an absent present from her father who excelled more at throwing things at her to occupy her time than actually parenting. Thoreau Lionett only understands love as a function of material possessions so this wasn’t some Ibanez starter bass to see if it she took to it.

Much to her chagrin she did take to it, she was so determined to reject another empty soulless gift from her father but then something happened. She felt the thrum of the strings against her heart and it changed something inside of it that she could never take back. It was this wild unhinged feeling and yet completely contained. Like a calm washing over the core of her being for the first time.

God, it all sounds pretty fucking dramatic in hindsight.

Looking back on it, it’s when she made the choice to not really, truly care about anything else.

Thoreau grew to resent the bass he presented to her as he grew to resent anything that truly made her happy. Happiness is the enemy of obedience in her father's world and so one day between her freshman and sophomore year he announced he was sending her away to a private boarding school.

Don’t be concerned Beauregard, he said with barely a hint of true emotion in his voice, I think they have an esteemed music program.

Three months before graduation Beau got a phone call from her mother announcing the birth of her baby brother. She took her first ever drink of alcohol in the dorm room of a girl she’d been working up the courage to hang out with all the while stewing over the fact she didn’t even know her mom was pregnant.

That night was also the first time she ever had sex with a woman.

Pain and sex and the sweet, sweet numbness.

A most holy triad.

One week later Beau left that boarding school, moved to LA, and never looked back.

***

Molly had a million stories. Beau believed about half of them but it wasn’t about the story it was about the journey. Molly had this way of taking you places that you didn’t want to go but you didn’t know he took you there until you arrived.

Maybe Beau’s the kind of person who always wanted to believe in something but realized too early that everything was built on a foundation of bricks finely crafted out of bullshit. It’s a funny type of thing when you realize that most of the people around you are full of shit at a really young age. Sort of jades you to the whole idea of existing in the world. What’s the point if nothing is real?

There was something about Molly’s bullshit that was never like that. It was bullshit, they both knew it was bullshit, but it wasn’t malignant bullshit. It meant something, it was bullshit with an ideology. Bullshit with a code. It made the sun shine brighter and the air smell sweeter. Or whatever, Beau’s never excelled at flowery language.

Beau moved out of the shitty one room apartment she was sharing with five roommates and into Molly’s two bedroom apartment he could magically afford within two weeks of their first meeting.

Molly had this beautiful, deep purple custom Gibson SG Special. Every time Beau asked about its origin Molly had a different story to tell until Beau finally accepted that something things are too mystical to understand.

She’d kept the very same bass her father gave her all those years ago. Well maintained whether or not she had food to feed herself at the time.

When they jammed together for the first time Beau found something better than drugs and alcohol and sex with the hottest women having nice abs can attract. Finally, fucking finally, somebody spoke her language. Their guitars speaking to each other, speaking with each other and creating a singular transformative sound.

And for a while that was enough.

The symbiosis of their self destructive tendencies and incredible musical chemistry led to the best or worst six months of Beau’s life depending on where you fall on the moral compass.

It’s a blur. Beau leans her head against the glass of her Lyft’s window, she weathers the bumps as the alcohol starts to settle and sour in the bottom of her stomach.

She wishes she remembered the fine details of that period other than the overwhelming feeling of hedonistic bliss. Excess for the sake of excess became the order of the day and then one of those days Molly grabbed a pen and a legal pad and started writing some shit down. Funny shit at first, dumb songs about the dishes piling up in the sink or the odd jobs they both had to work to support their growing habits. Beau never did ask how they were too poor for drugs but lived in a nice two bedroom apartment.

Now she never can.

Beau stares out the window and lets the synthetic city pass her by.

***

Beau hooked up with Yasha during a particularly sober week in the middle of the summer and Molly took an instant liking to the intimidating woman hanging out in their living room. Technically it was supposed to be a one night stand but Yasha happened to notice Molly’s legendary guitar on the way out and stopped to admire the piece of work. Molly happened to wander out of his room at that exact same time and the rest is history.

When Yasha finally left that day it was only for a couple of hours. When she came back it was with a huge Blackstar amp and a gorgeous Fender Telecaster with a black body that seemed to sprout ice blue lightning bolts from the bridge down the fretboards. Suddenly Beau felt self conscious with her simple, yet expensive, bass.

She mentioned as much to Molly once after all three of them jammed in the living room until the neighbors threatened to call the cops. He just smirked and ruffled her hair before he told her to stop worrying about aesthetics when the world would see her anyway, it was unavoidable, she was meant to be seen.

Beau’s never fucking forgotten that.

She’s never understood it either.

***

Her hotel is exactly 1.3 miles away from the old apartment. It takes everything inside of her not to turn away from the check in desk, take all of her shit and go the fuck home. Except it’s not home anymore and it hasn’t been for almost longer than it was. There’s no point to going, she wouldn’t find what she’s looking for anyway.

***

At the end of the day while it is admirable to try, you can’t actually start a band with three guitars and a dream. It’s a choice, right. Like there’s this point when you’re jamming with your buds and you’re writing words down and you start to find a pattern to the madness that you have to decide. You have to ask the big questions.

What are we doing here? Are we all just getting fucked up and forgetting our shit and having fun or do we want to do something with this?

Yasha makes the decision for them when she brings in this gigantic long haired hippie named Caduceus who, no shit, walks in with flowers woven into his hair and a pair of drum sticks sheathed on his back like a pair of swords.

“He plays the drums.” Yasha said without a hint of irony.

“No shit.” Beau remembers saying as she stared up at this mountain of a man.

“Hey friends,” Cad responded with a tranquil smile as he looked around the room. “I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

So they got one, a little garage they rented from a rich couple in the valley who spent most of their time traveling abroad anyway. For a small fee and the bigger chore of house sitting while they were out of time they got space to actually play as loud as they wanted.

And they played and played and played until finally, one day, Molly stopped and threw his hands up in frustration. “We’re missing something, I don’t know what it is. I won’t know it until I see it. You know, like porn, but when I see it. I’ll know it. And when I know it, we’ll be ready.”

It wasn’t exactly rare for Molly to spout off some profundity in the middle of nowhere and, to be fair, he was mostly saying nothing. But nothing led to everything.

Two weeks later, Molly met Jester at a milk bar of all places and, just like that, they were complete.

***

If she stays in the hotel room nothing can get fucked up, that’s a truth so universal it cannot be disputed. She can get as despondent as she wants and she doesn’t have to deal with the masses realizing Beauregard Lionett is back.

It’s not like they aren’t looking for her. The 24-hour news cycle demands the public digest her grief and spit it back out at her. She’s the one who left, she’s the one who killed their momentum. It’s all her fault. The tragic overdose of Mollymauk Tealeaf by the coward Beauregard Lionett. How sad, how tragic, so sudden, so soon. He was so young, remember to hold your kids tight and talk to them about the dangers of substance abuse. A bunch of offended, myopic bullshit that Beau vengefully hate reads as she contemplates burning down the world with all of these people in it.

***

For the insultingly low bar of never stealing from them while house sitting, their rich benefactors pay for a whole day of studio time. Suddenly they’re all faced with the startling realization that they might actually have something to show for all of this.

So they give themselves a name. The Orphan Makers started out as a big joke, in all honesty. There’s some deep and deeply fake story they made up for their big Rolling Stone interview about how most of them have shitty or no relationship with their parents and blah blah blah, whatever. In reality Cad convinced them all to smoke something he called weed but was probably not considering the result.

Long story short, Jester’s high ass blurted it out and a legacy was born.

It was also the last time Jester touched drugs but that’s later.

The day finally came for them to go to the studio not that Beau remembers enjoying it very much. Something about the permanancy and the pressure brought up all this old shit about how, you know, she’s a huge fuck up who her parents replaced as soon as humanly possible. About how a loser like her even got messed up with all of these people who clearly deserve to be going places.

If it hadn’t been for the fact that Molly was her ride, she probably would have ran then and there. Maybe she should have and saved them the rest of it.

By this time drinking was less of a thing Beau did to party and more of a thing she did to float through each day. She must have realized at some point that nobody noticed the difference whether she was sober or not so she might as well choose not and feel a little less pain.

Molly blasts out their demo to anyone who is even remotely connected to music in LA until a club offers them a standing set every Saturday night. They get paid in live show experience and free drinks. Beau figures her money goes to booze anyway so why not. But she doesn’t get what the fuck they’re actually doing until one day she looks across the stage at Molly tearing into a lick as he presses his lips close to the microphone and practically purrs the lyrics. Yasha has her eyes closed and looks more at peace than Beau’s ever seen. Cad too, blissed out on the rhythm of their own creation.

Jester’s eyes flutter between lidded and bright wide eyed glee as she exuberantly plucks at her synth keyboard. In the moment when her eyes turn into barely there slits Beau thinks back to the night before. Beau went out to the balcony of their apartment and cast CHVRCHES onto the bluetooth speaker they kept out there. She’s in a mood and she’s not entirely sure why but she just wants to not be. There’s something about synth when her heart feels cold, she can’t explain it. It’s a feeling down in her bones.

Beau pulls out the pre-roll from her pocket. It took a few tries but she finally got it lit and the red glow of the cherry fills the small space in front of her face. She sits there for moments that seem like chasms of time before she hears the creak of the sliding door.

“Hey.”

Jester pulls her big old woman cardigan tighter around her body and for the first time Beau notices the shape of her hips. She takes a long drag and purposefully blows the smoke away from Jester. “It’s always a beautiful night in LA.” Jester leans back against the railing blocking Beau’s view of the city. “Have you ever noticed that?”

Beau wishes she could say yes but she doesn’t see the beauty like Jester does. Even in the short time they’ve been on this weird ride, Beau knows that. However she stumbled into their grasp, Beau’s always known she doesn’t really belong there. Jester’s the best of them.

“I grew up by the beach,” Jester continues like Beau isn’t an idiot who can never do the right thing. “I don’t think I could ever leave the ocean, not really.”

“What are you, a mermaid?” Beau blurts out and immediately takes another hit to cover her embarrassment.

Jester only smiles and looks over her right shoulder at the city. “Something like that.”

“I mean, you do deal exclusively in scales.” Beau tries to salvage the terrible pun by making a snare drum sound with her mouth and finishing it off with a discordant fake cymbal. She pushes herself halfway out of the chair. “I’ll see myself out.”

A soft hand lands on Beau’s arm and squeezes lightly as it gently pushes her down in the chair. “Don’t go,” She swipes her thumb briefly against Beau’s forearm and the shockwave resonates to the core of Beau’s physical existence. Jester nods towards the speaker. “This is my favorite one.”

“It’s not even their song, it’s a cover.”   
  


“Just because it’s a cover doesn’t mean it’s not their song,” Jester points to her ears. “Listen. You’ll hear it.”

Beau closes her eyes and lets the sound fall in waves over her. She can feel Jester watching her and it forces her to close her eyes even tighter. Music, really experiencing music with someone else is this singular experience. There’s sex, there’s love, and then there’s art.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, it’s just that I’m constantly on the cusp of trying...to kiss you,” Jester starts to sing under her breath. Beau tries not to notice. “And I don’t know if you, feel the same as I do.” It’s so quiet that it’s clearly not meant for Beau, this isn’t for her. This is something for Jester and Beau wants to know why.

Back on the stage Jester’s eyes flicker open and catches Beau’s.

***

The next morning the sun doesn’t come up in Los Angeles. And why would it? A world without Molly in it doesn’t deserve the sun anyway.

***

The balcony becomes their place. Beau and Molly have the bar where they first met, Beau and Jester have CHVRCHES and the balcony.

Jester starts to see her, like really seeing her as more. It’s more intoxicating than any of the shit she’s put in her body. There’s something sort of funny about an addictive personality, it doesn’t have to be a drug or a substance. It’s a feeling, a person, a dream, whatever.

And then suddenly the dream changes and they all change and whether they knew it or not it’s the beginning of the end.

One day some white guy in a suit walks into the club - because isn’t it always a white guy in a suit? He walks in, tells him he can take them straight to the moon, and signs them on the spot.

She and Molly blow every cent of their share of the signing bonus on a singular night of pure hedonistic bliss before crawling back to the apartment so high they’ve circled back around to being stone cold sober again.

Sometimes when Beau thinks about where everything got fucked up, she thinks of that night in particular and the inherent problems with being so charismatic nobody gets you have a problem until you implode.

But by that time they’d convinced themselves of the process of their art, the process of their fucked up lifestyles feeding into their success. After all, if you’re not out there living life then what the fuck do you actually write about? You know, the kind of shit you have to force yourself to believe in order to preserve a very fragile world view.

The night after their epic binge Beau finds herself out on the balcony again by herself. Music lower in the background than she would usually have it because her head still feels like it could split in half. At this point it’s expected when the door slides open and Jester steps out into the chilly night air.

“When are you going to start paying rent?” Beau asks through a forced smile. Jester seems to be over so much that if it wasn’t for the fact she went home to sleep, Beau would think she moved in. Not that Beau is so aloof that she won’t admit she doesn’t mind.

“I pull my weight.” Jester says with a neutral face as she settles on the arm of Beau’s chair. Instinctively Beau wraps her arm around Jester’s back so she doesn’t have to strain her core so much.

“Sure you do.”

The silence stretches longer than usual which is how Beau gets the sense Jester has something on her mind. Otherwise Jester would already be pushing her on lyrical analysis or pushing Beau to find some sort of deeper meaning she’s been running from since she understood things could have meaning.

Beau turns to say something but she gets blindsided by Jester’s lips pressing delicately against her own. Like she was so determined to do it but then at the last moment realized Beau needs to choose.

The answer was never in doubt.

***

The problem with being an artistic type is that having a problem looks exactly like having a process. That’s where they fucked up. That’s where everything fucked up.

Beau never had a chance of holding on to someone like Jester. A genuinely good person, a genuine person with issues but with coping mechanisms and a healthy sense of self and direction. Someone who hates herself as much as Beau does, someone who punishes herself as Beau was never going to build anything lasting.

They go on their first tour opening for The Killers which, actually, made for a sick looking poster if nothing else. The Orphan Makers and The Killers sounds way more metal than what that actually all was but that’s not the point.

When you take a healthy dose of self hatred, a fragile and burgeoning relationship, and remove the word ‘no’ from your vocabulary some predictably fucked up shit starts to happen.

It was never supposed to be that much and it was never supposed to be that fast. They gain a following. Perhaps it’s because each one of them is more attractive and charismatic than the last or maybe the music is good. The music is good, the music was always good. Beau knows that. Hell, as soon as they started to crack it got even better.

Misery breeds a certain kind of art that becomes addictive itself. She and Molly, specifically, became obsessed with creating new pain - new misery. The old misery wasn’t enough anymore, it grew stale in their mouths as they fell further and further into their respective black holes.

And god, Jester.

Touring wasn’t her thing. She loved the music and she loved the band but the lifestyle, the spotlight, the growing spotlight as the dates wore on.

Beau cradles Jester’s head on the crook of her shoulder one night in the tiny bed in the back of the tour bus as they hurtle down the 8 on their way to Arizona. Jester’s tapping a beat on Beau’s stomach but Beau doesn’t ask, she nuzzles her chin on the top of Jester’s head and follows the sharp angle of her chin with a kiss.

They spend more moments like this these days. They’ve never talked about what they are, they simply are. And that was always enough for Beau. She always knew she was lucky enough that Jester even wanted to spend a spare moment with her, let alone label it. Labeling made it real and then Beau had to be accountable to something. She had to be accountable to the fact that she’s a piece of shit and Jester certainly will move on one day to someone better.

If there’s one thing Beau’s like made her sure of, there’s always someone better than her.

Jester starts humming. Beau feels the vibrations of Jester’s essence deep in her bones. It feels like the first note she ever played on the bass. It feels like that every time.

Beau would never say that, it’s stupid. Cheesy. And certainly not reciprocated.

Suddenly Jester stops. “Do you know what I like to imagine when we’re laying here like this?” Beau shakes her head. “I like to imagine we’re back in LA playing a show each Saturday for the same hundred people. They know all the words, that sweaty guy in the front who throws his number at Yasha every show. All of it.” Beau feels her exhale deeply and rubs her back in circles she hopes are comforting. “Then we get home and I take you out to the balcony. I’m sitting on your lap, looking out at the city, yeah.” Jester turns over so she’s laying half on, half off of Beau’s chest. “Don’t you think?”

Words escape Beau most of the time when it really counts and this is no different. She answers in the only way she knows how and kisses Jester like she loves her.

In retrospect she should have said so instead.

***

The next day Beau overdoses on some bad coke after their show In Phoenix and comes this close to dying. Jester can’t seem to stand her touch after that. So that’s the end of that.

***

Church and Beau never really mixed. Church and Molly never really mixed and yet here she is and here he is.

It’s all wrong.

It’s not supposed to be this way.

Beau thinks back to that night in Phoenix and, not for the first time, wonders if she should have died that night.

God, she shouldn’t have done this sober. Beau looks at the trucks lining the streets and the pictures she knows the paparazzi have already taken of her.

No, for this she needs to be present.

She refuses to let Molly down again.   
  


***

In a cruel twist of celebrity, Beau’s incident puts The Orphan Makers on front pages. She almost dies and it charts them. Celebrity is this fucked up feedback loop of ridiculous nonsense but it’s what happens. Suddenly they don’t need The Killers, they can headline their own small tours. Sure the whole fucking thing is falling apart from the inside but hey, Ellen knows who Beau is so that’s something.

Jester gives her these longing looks when she thinks Beau is looking. It’s usually the opposite from all of the books and movies Beau’s ever consumed but it’s like Jester wants Beau to know she still wants her but refuses to have her.

As if Beau didn’t fucking know what’s she’s lost. She’s infinitely aware.

Does she stop the toxic behavior though?

The problem with being a bullshit artist is that there’s always risk you start to believe your own bullshit. You spend so much of your time finding the irony in your own hype that one day you realize it’s all you listen to anymore. It’s even worse when you’re in misery and the company is readily available.

The hole inside of them that bonded them that fateful night became the same thing that destroyed them in the end. Every experience, every moment became this competition to kill the most pain in one go. Where once they’d had this noble idea to leave the world better than they found it with their music, they now left a trail of carnage in their wake.

Then the fighting started.

Then the interventions.

Then the terrible fucking sets where Beau could barely stay on beat let alone keep a repetitive bass line going and god forbid Molly remember more than a chorus or a verse at a time.

The thing about being so deep in the weeds is that you’re never so deep you can’t feel the pity. Beau grew so tired of the pity so she thrust herself deeper and deeper into the void until the void started looking back at her. There’s nothing good in a void is the thing. The void is where all of that shit lives that she never wanted to hear from again. The sound of her father's disgust at the concept of her existence, being replaceable as a daughter so why wouldn’t she be replaceable as an entire human being, why the fuck not?

Fuck it, Jester can’t stop looking at her like Beau personally ruined her future and Cad can’t stop looking at her like he would personally drive her and Molly both to therapy if he thought they wouldn’t go feral, and Yasha? Yasha is the worst because she looks at both of them like she gets it. And if she gets it and she can be fine then what the fuck is wrong with the two of them?

It’s all too fucking much. Beau feels on the verge of a panic attack but it’s buried so deep underneath the layers of artifice that keeps her whole thing going. And then one day she snaps. It’s Radio City Music Hall, this is it. This is a big deal. They do this show and they’re cemented, they’ve done something in their lives that nobody will be able to get.

That morning Beau wanders down to the hotel lobby. Right as she gets off the elevator she sees Yasha and Jester sitting in two armchairs by the front desk, heads bent in serious discussion. It’s nothing spectacular, that’s the weird thing. When you blow up your whole life there’s usually fireworks. Something bombastic to remember the whole incident but it wasn’t like that.

It was a dark feeling in the pit of her stomach. A piece of the void stuck in stasis, influencing her towards her darkest impulses. She took one look at this benign scene and panic set in.

She walked out that day, took the train to JFK, bought the first flight to anywhere and never looked back.

***

As soon as she steps inside the church she feels that same thing only more visceral. So visceral it threatens to knock her off of her feet. She hid for so many years until people stopped asking questions. She hid through so many requests for interview and texts and calls and angry emails and shit they’d never said to each other and would never say to each other again as it turns out.

Beau never said it out loud but she knows she broke Molly’s heart that day. She killed the dream, she killed the delusion, she killed him.

She’s not responsible for his actual death, she feels like it but she knows she’s not. She doesn’t need therapy to get that. But when she walked out she killed both of their spirits. The band went on because a bass player at the end of the day isn’t the hardest thing to find and it went on fine. But Molly’s spirit was never the same and Beau feels that guilt on her heart.

The door to the church opens again and Beau looks back out of instinct.

Her life is good cinema. Jester locks eyes with Beau, she holds the gaze for a solid six seconds. Beau doesn’t dare to look away.

Jester breaks her gaze and walks to a pew in the front without saying a word.

***

The service is pure Molly. Beau understands the why of the church now, it’s about the irony. It’s about subversion of expectations to the very bitter end.

Beau’s not paying attention when the MC says her name at first. It’s not something she’s expecting and it takes the MC repeating her name and half the church staring at her slumped into a pew in the back before she catches on.

She looks over her shoulder just to make sure there’s not another Beauregard Lionett hiding in the rafters.

“It was important to Molly that Beauregard give a speech,” The MC, whose name Beau did not capture, says again as if to give her a prompt.

That fucker, Beau thinks as she pushes herself off the bench, this would be how he would punish her for everything. She makes the long walk from the back as people, confused as all fuck, start to tentatively clap. As she gets closer to the front she catches Jester’s eyes and her stomach does a full swoop. Just completely drops out from under her, she feels her heart skip a singular beat.

Jester nods at her and gives her a soft, tentative smile. Her eyes soften and Beau feels that vibration in her chest, even with the distance between them.

Her pace quickens as she ascends the short staircase that leads to the stage. The MC hands her the microphone. Beau looks out at the crowd and sees her own confusion and apprehension reflected back at her. Somehow it settles her in a way that eagerness wouldn’t.

She holds the microphone up to her mouth. “I didn’t prepare a speech,” She shakes her head and looks at the ground and mutters below her breath. “Fucking obvious, Beau.” She was trying to be quiet but the microphone picks it up anyway. “Um, I guess I’ll start with how we met.” Beau goes on and tells the same story she’s told a hundred times and somewhere in there she realizes she’s telling a story about drugs at the funeral of someone who overdosed but she looks out at the crowd and Jester’s smile is encouraging so she keeps speaking and telling funny stories until something hits her. A note of something real infects her chest and spills out into the microphone.

She clears her throat to gather herself. “Molly left everything and everyone better than he found them. Even if he didn’t mean to, that’s what happened anyway,” Beau shakes her head, she refuses to cry in front of all these people. “Molly left me better than he found me and I left him.” A tear escapes anyway but she doesn’t bother to wipe it away. “But now I get it, I think I finally get it. And I’m sorry, you all didn’t come here for my personal revelation but he did.” She points back to his portrait displayed next to his casket. “I’m up here because he wanted me to be.” Beau pauses and smiles through a wry laugh as another tear trails down her cheek. “He wanted me to know he forgave me so I could finally forgive myself.” She looks back at his picture and can’t help but really start to laugh. Everyone in the crowd who had been gamely following along with the burgeoning knowledge they weren’t watching something that was for them starts to get a little restless.

Beau looks at Jester and Jester looks into her. Beau hasn’t been seen in years, not until this moment. She hands the microphone back to the MC and walks off the stage. The crowd starts to haltingly applaud, not entirely sure what they just experienced. Beau doesn’t stop at her back pew, she keeps walking until she’s out the door and in the fresh air. She doesn’t notice she has a companion until she feels a familiar delicate hand on her shoulder. Beau doesn’t need to turn around, she feels the same thrum she always has.

“He did forgive you,” Jester speaks softly like Beau’s a spooked deer. “By the end, anyway, he did.”

“I know.” She didn’t when she got the call or on the plane or in the hotel room or even when she walked into the church but now? She understands now. Beau turns around suddenly. Jester’s hand hangs absently where Beau’s shoulder used to be. “Did you?”

Jester’s face softens and her hand goes to tip Beau’s face up towards her at the chin. “Come in misery,” She starts to sing softly. Beau’s heart jumps to years ago and a balcony she managed to romanticize within an inch of its life and a band she can’t listen to anymore without feeling like she’s being carved out from the inside. “Where you can seem as old as your omens.”

“Jes,” Beau fights the urge to move her head, she hasn’t felt Jester’s touch in so long she craves it more than she craves protecting her own heart.

“I couldn’t at first,” Jester says softly as she uses her thumb to paint absent circles on Beau’s chin. Her synapses feel like they’re firing on all cylinders even as she takes a moment to process the words. “I missed you more than I was mad at you.” Beau tries to turn her head away but Jester’s touch turns firm. “Then Molly started to get worse and I was mad at you more than I missed you.”

“What changed?” Beau can’t stop herself before the words are out of her mouth. It’s like Pandora’s question or Schrodinger’s query, as long as it was in the box it was neither positive or negative. It was energy neither created nor destroyed.

“Honestly?” Jester laughs suddenly and looks away.

“Always,” Beau feels the scratchiness of her voice push through as the full emotion of the day hits her like a brick wall.

Jester smiles but it feels so incongruent with the day and yet, somehow it fits. “Years and years of very expensive therapy.”

“Can we?” Beau trails off almost as soon as she starts the question. Ashamed she even thought to ask it in the first place.

“No,” Jester says firmly but kindly. She was always able to read Beau’s mind whether Beau spoke or not. “I can’t,” She pauses and looks Beau over, like really takes a look at her. Sadness starts to seep into Jester’s eyes and Beau wonders what kind of pathetic figure she cuts. Her voice breaks. “Losing Molly, that was, I had to watch him fall apart without you and I know, come on Beau,” Jester looks away. “Don’t ask me that full question.”

“Okay,” Beau swallows the question and thinks of a different one, a more appropriate one. “Do you think it would be okay if I visited again in a few months?”

Jester visibly falls into deep thought, chewing on her bottom lip as she worries it over and over again.

“I’m sorry,” Beau cuts off whatever thought Jester’s stuck on. “I shouldn’t have asked, that was stupid of me. Maybe Molly brought us all together and Molly is where we end too.”

Jester tilts her head and really looks at Beau, like really looks at her. Beau feels uncomfortable like she’s under an electron microscope. She stays as still as possible until Jester takes a step forward, Beau resists the urge to take a step away.

“He wouldn’t say that.”

“What would he say?”

Jester considers it for a moment before she takes another step forward and wraps her arms around Beau. Her lips brush against Beau’s ear. “Hope is all we have.”

**Author's Note:**

> Uh hey guys, so I'm going to go ahead and say this one is not for everyone but it has been floating around the back of my mind in some form or another and then episode 93 came and the concept of weaving in isolation and misery came to me. Hopefully it's someone's cup of tea!
> 
> Musical references are all CHVRCHES:
> 
> Title and end song quote from The Mother We Share  
> Balcony Song: Cover of 'Do I Wanna Know?' which is one of my favorites.


End file.
